Water-colour painting of the coastline near to Kannur by Thomas Cussans (1796-1870). Cussans served in the Madras artillery in 1814, then the Horse Brigade from 1817 to 1829. This is one of 19 drawings (22 folios) of scenes in Mumbai (Bombay) and the south of India together with a few miscellaneous sketches taken between 1817 and c.1822. Inscribed on the cover of the album is: 'Thos Cussans Lt. Madras Artillery. Janry 1817'; and on the title page: 'Thos Cussans, July 30th, 1817'

Kannur (Cannanore) is situated on a headland overlooking a picturesque bay in Kerala, in the south west of India. The region is bounded by the Western Ghats to the east, the Kozhikkod and Wayanad districts to the south, the Lakshadeep Sea to the west and Kasaragod to the north. Kannur has had an interesting political history. For many centuries it was the capital of the Kothagiri Rajas who were based at Chirakkal. The quest for spices lured several European explorers to this land most famously, Vasco da Gama (1460-1524) the Portuguese explorer who discovered an ocean route from Portugal to the East. He arrived here in 1498 and Kannur subsequently became an important trading station. The fort of St. Angelo was constructed in 1505 by the first Portuguese Viceroy Don Francisco De Almeda with the consent of the ruling Kolathiri Raja. In 1656 the Dutch expelled the Portuguese and subsequently sold the town to a Moplah family (a community of Arab descent) who claimed sovereignty over the Laccadive Islands, a group of coral reefs and islands off the coast of Kerala. Moplah rule was terminated by the British who attacked and captured Kannur in 1790 and it became their most important military base in the south of India.